


you're my melody (and i'm your song)

by estel_willow



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, alex manes has a thing for Michael's hair, fluff?, mention of Alex's abusive dad, reference to the events of 1x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 13:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18477214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: Alex is sixteen the first time he sees Michael. Michael Guerin walks into second period English fifteen minutes late with a ratty hoodie on and a threadbare backpack over his shoulder, curls bouncing and - to Alex - shining like the sun. Mr Lewis’ unimpressed ‘you must be Mr Guerin’ registers somewhere in the back of Alex’s mind but by that point they’ve eyes and Alex is lost.Otherwise known as that one where Alex really loves Michael's hair.





	you're my melody (and i'm your song)

Alex is sixteen the first time he sees Michael. Michael Guerin walks into second period English fifteen minutes late with a ratty hoodie on and a threadbare backpack over his shoulder, curls bouncing and - to Alex - shining like the sun. Mr Lewis’ unimpressed ‘ _you must be Mr Guerin_ ’ registers somewhere in the back of Alex’s mind but by that point they’ve eyes and Alex is lost.

Liz has talked a lot about Kyle, and how she likes putting her hands in his hair when he kisses her and honestly Alex tunes it out most of the time because it’s _Kyle_ and Kyle is a jerk who doesn’t deserve Liz Ortecho’s attention, let alone her fingers in his hair and he’d never understood the fascination, but as Guerin moves towards the back of the class - where Alex makes his home - without breaking eye contact, Alex realises with some surprise that the urge sparking inside of him is _want_ , a want to push his fingers through those curls and hold on, to see what happens.

* * *

Alex is seventeen the first time he gets a chance to do exactly that. Michael kisses him in the museum and it’s perfect but Alex doesn’t know where to put his hands, and Michael’s were around his face, holding him like something precious and they kiss and it’s- it’s _perfect_. But that’s nothing compared to when they get back to the toolshed. His father’s at work, there’s nobody due to be home for hours so Alex knows that it’s safe - that _they’re_ safe. When their lips meet again, Alex’s hand pushes back into Michael’s hair and he kisses him the way he’s thought about ever since the first time they met. 

The way Michael’s breath hitches when Alex’s fingers fist in his hair, the touch drawing him closer as their bodies press together, is almost more of a thrill than anything else and Alex knows that he’ll never love something as much as he loves this right here.

* * *

Michael isn’t breathing properly and Alex can’t do anything to help him save wrap the fingers that are bleeding and crooked and beg Michael to go to a hospital. His fingers push through those curls as Michael dry-heaves from the pain and Alex knows this is his fault. 

They hear the sound of footsteps coming from the house, the thundering boom of Jesse Manes and Alex tells Michael to run, bundles the only first aid kit he has into his hands and pushes him away, knowing that even though Jesse would never use a hammer on his son, the hands that would be laid on him were anything but tender.

As he closes his eyes and tries to find his zone in preparation for what he knows is coming, Alex thinks about how soft Michael’s hair is, and how for the first time he had learned that a touch could be pleasant. It has to be enough.

* * *

He doesn’t see Guerin again that summer, Guerin withdraws from everyone but especially from Alex and Alex can’t really blame him. Jesse Manes is a monster and a bully and had used his power to hurt the one thing that Alex had loved. He doesn’t blame Michael for not wanting to see him anymore, for not wanting anything to do with him, but that doesn’t stop him from waking up in the morning with the bittersweet taste of a kiss on the edge of his lips and the ghostly memory of Michael’s hair between his fingers and weight above him.

It’s torture, and it’s the first time Alex thinks that maybe his father is right about him. If this was how he was meant to be, why does it hurt so much?

* * *

He’s twenty-two and Fallujah is loud and dusty and chaotic. People are screaming and civilians are crying, broken mournful wails that Alex knows are going to haunt him for the rest of his life, the soundtrack to his time in the military is going to be pain and gunfire and the wailing cries of those left behind. He’s on point, dropped in to provide cover for an extraction, and there are enemies everywhere. 

To his left, he sees a flash of golden-brown curls and his mind thinks _Michael_ and his body reacts because the irrational fear that Michael was out here somehow overrides all of Alex’s sense of self-preservation. It isn’t Michael, but the move from his position ends up with Alex taking a shot to the shoulder and five hours later he’s leaning up against the toilet wall of a bar with his fingers twisted in a dark mess of someone’s curly hair as he pushes their head down and he’s calling them Michael and hating himself for every second.

* * *

He’s twenty-four when he sees Michael again, he’s come back from deployment and his leave is only for two weeks because he has special forces training to attend to keep him on track to becoming an officer. He’s advancing up the ranks quickly, despite his ‘perversions’, despite his father doing everything possible to keep him down on the lower ranks of the chain of command. 

He doesn’t know where else to look so he heads to the Pony but as he steps out of his truck and sees Michael again the world rushes into a point. Alex feels like he’s come home, even though he’s still thirty paces away from the only person in the world who had made him feel safe. He opens his mouth to shout Michael’s name but someone else beats him to it and Michael turns, hair catching in the flickering sign of the Wild Pony and Alex sees a brunette slide her arms around his shoulders. Michael’s arms go around her waist and Alex watches them kiss before feeling unclean and has to look away. 

He pulls open the door of his truck and starts to climb inside, only to look back once more to see Michael staring at him like he’s a ghost, slack-jawed and his date forgotten. But Alex turns the key and starts the ignition and drives away before Michael’s even taken a single step in his direction.

* * *

Alex is twenty seven and he’s finally back in Roswell. He’s a combat veteran now, he’s seen three tours and done things he never would have dreamed that he’s both proud of and... not so proud of. He’s lost the lower half of his leg and when his time is up he knows he won’t be reenlisting, he won’t be carrying on the Manes family legacy. He never wanted it. 

The parade is the worst; Alex hates being the centre of attention and hates even more that he has to stand next to his father while the town celebrates his homecoming. His father gives a speech about how proud he is of all of his children, proud that Alex is upholding his family’s legacy to protect the great country that they live in. Alex doesn’t give a speech, by the time the parade is over he’s been on his feet for hours and his hips hurt. His stump hurts and he’s done with the noise. 

Noah Bracken finds him just as he’s trying to work out where he can stay for the night and gives him a key and a title deed to Jim Valenti’s cabin and Alex feels a surge of gratitude that sweeps through him powerfully enough that he has to sit down. 

It’s just as he’s collecting himself, pulling his thoughts back together that he looks up and thinks he sees Guerin, but that’s impossible. Guerin wouldn’t still be stuck in this town. He’s better than that. He always was.

* * *

_Nostaliga’s a bitch._

The words ring true and not just because there’s an image of him skateboarding plastered right in front of him. Guerin’s there - _right there_ \- and Alex feels his whole body trying to sway into Michael’s orbit, like he could just let go and float away in the memories of the past but it isn’t that easy. He’s got responsibilities, now. The shadow of Jesse Manes and the threat - _anything could happen to a kid like that, no one would even notice he was gone_ \- chases after every single uneven step Alex takes and has taken since he got back to town. Just being here makes him feel like a helpless kid all over again, helpless to fight his father, helpless to fight the way Michael makes him feel. 

When they come together it’s Michael that starts it, but it’s Alex that pushes in, slides his hands down Michael’s chest to hook them against his lower back, their chests collide and Alex feels something in his chest slot into place that’s been missing for a very long time.

* * *

He tells himself that what happened at the reunion won’t happen again. He tells Guerin, too, but there’s a flood of adrenaline associated specifically with Michael confirming that he isn’t leaving Roswell and then he’s saying that he never looks away and that nothing has changed and Alex doesn’t understand why he can’t see that yes, _everything_ has changed. Nothing is the same now, they aren’t the same people, but it doesn't seem to matter because Michael still looks at him like he’s made of starlight. 

When they come together again, Alex’s fingers push up into the curls that have been on his mind for over ten years. They’re just as soft as he remembers when his fingers push back into them even though their lips are clashing in a kiss that’s more tongue and teeth and desperation than tenderness and Michael’s breath hitches in that same way it did when they were seventeen when Alex’s fingers fist in them.

* * *

Alex is thirty when he’s drunk too much at his own birthday party and needs to go home. He hasn’t kissed Michael in two long years - Michael and Maria dated for a while but it didn’t work out, irreconcilable differences or something but Alex never cared enough to ask because he was petty and hurt and knew it was his own fault but that was hardly the point - but on this side of Too Much Tequila it’s easy to remember what that feels like. It’s easy to let himself feel the physical ache of missing Michael. It’s easy to wish that he hadn’t messed things up by being afraid. 

It’s easier, he finds, when Michael’s the one that sweeps an arm around his waist and promises that he’ll get him home safe. Michael drinks less nowadays. Fights less too. And he’s still here.

A fact Alex tells him with a lopsided smile. Guerin just snorts. “Yeah, Alex,” he mutters, and Alex maybe imagines how Michael’s face softens, how his head turns to chase the touch of Alec’s thumb and forefinger when he reaches out to touch the alien. How his head tips into the touch when Alex lifts his own to push that curl away from over Michael’s right eye. “I’m still here.”

Alex just grins. “I know, Guerin,” he tells him, patting Michael’s chest now and leaning against the truck while Michael fusses with his keys. “I just figured you’d be long gone with your console all in place and since you’re not with Maria anymore. Nothing to keep you here.” 

Michael goes still, and if Alex were soberer he’d have stopped talking, or have never said anything in the first place but Alex doesn’t have the best filter after he’s been drinking tequila and so he keeps going, even as Micaehl pours him into the truck. 

“Glad you didn’t leave,” he says, and Michael’s yeah? is more interested and hopeful than it has any right to be. Alex ruined him, he ruins all the things that he loves, and Michael isn’t supposed to flex his fingers around the steering wheel like he wants to reach out but is stopping himself. “Yeah,” he replies, sleepy now he’s sitting down, exhaustion tugging at the edges of his mind. “I’d miss you.”

* * *

Three weeks after Alex’s birthday and Michael’s at his cabin and kisses him again. It’s tentative and it’s hesitant and it’s everything it has no right to be. Alex doesn’t realise it then, but Michael misses him, too. That things with Maria didn’t work out because Michael is - and always will be - in love with Alex before anyone else. And Maria deserves better than to play second best for anyone.

Michael pulls away before Alex can even lift his hands and his throat works, senses effectively short-circuited and blood rushing to a place that certainly isn’t his brain. It’s been too long, he knows, since he’s been kissed and it being _Michael_ just makes it worse.

“You just did that,” he manages, throat drier than the desert. 

“I did,” Michael agrees with a nod of his head, looking unsteady and uncertain and like he wants to run. He’s taken three steps backwards and his shoulders are hunched, raised protectively, shielding himself from a blow he’s expecting Alex to land.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Are you gonna keep answering my questions with questions?” 

Michael’s lips twitch up into a little grin. It’s infuriating. Alex wants to kiss it off his face. Which is exactly what he does when he closes the distance between them, feeling with some satisfaction the surprised grunt that escapes Michael when his back hits the wall firmly. It doesn’t last for long, because in a matter of seconds their positions are reversed and Michael is crowding him against the wall, kissing him in a way that feels searing and tender and desperate all at once and when Alex’s fingers twist in his hair again and tug sharply, Michael hisses and groans and drops to his knees.

* * *

“You’re still here.” 

Michael’s voice is soft, reverent and full of wonder and Alex can’t help the way that his chest tightens in response. Michael sprawled over him at some point in the night, head on Alex’s chest and Alex has been awake for about an hour, just carding his fingers through Michael’s hair and enjoying the prickling across his skin with each breath out.

“Kinda hard to sneak out when I’m stuck being a pillow,” he responds, deadpan, but it’s the wrong thing to say and Michael audibly swallows. Not even the touch to his hair seems to ease the tension and Alex bites the inside of his lower lip. 

He lets his hand drop to Michael’s chin, uses it to force his head up so that he can make eye contact. “I told you I’d stay,” he murmurs, “that I’d be here when you woke up.”

Michael doesn’t look convinced, the self-deprecation is on the edge of his tongue. Alex speaks again before whatever words are about to come tumbling out of Michael’s mouth get a chance. 

“I promised you I’d not run anymore, remember?” Michael just nods, still unsure, still uncomfortable. He cracks a smile when Alex adds, “Besides, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t reach my prosthetic even if I wanted to.”

“I can get it,” Michael murmurs, and Alex shakes his head, shifting slightly so he can press a slow kiss against Michael’s lips.

“Mm, no,” he breathes, hand wandering down the planes of Michael’s torso, “I’m good where I am.” 

It’s been a month since Michael first kissed him and Alex knows that this is right. They took the time to relearn each other, and that helps Alex know what he’s known in his bones since he was a teenager. That he and Michael belong together. 

And the key to the cabin that’s sitting in the jacket of his pocket, the invitation he desperately wants to give, is just one more step towards the permanence he knows that Michael wants from him. And it’s a permanence that Alex desperately wants to provide.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a late night conversation with [SaadieStuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaadieStuff/pseuds/SaadieStuff/works?fandom_id=29002712), followed by waking up to [gif inspiration](https://saadiestuff.tumblr.com/post/184193384103/laurenkmyers-alex-manes-tugging-michaels). This is entirely her fault.
> 
> I will only accept being obsessed with Michael Vlamis' curls. 
> 
> There's the possibility this might be part of a wider 'verse with other hair-related ficlets, provided I can continue to find gifspiration xD


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